


we're gonna show 'em a thing, or two, or three

by friendly_ficus



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, basically just 1k about jester growing up, optimism is not a weakness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-10-01 17:43:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friendly_ficus/pseuds/friendly_ficus
Summary: "Years ago," Momma begins, "before you were born, there was a terrible plague of dragons across the sea. They were powerful and frightening, and their wings covered the sky in shadow, and their breath covered the land in fire."(Or: Jester, bedtime stories, and dragons.)





	we're gonna show 'em a thing, or two, or three

"Years ago," Momma begins, "before you were born, there was a terrible plague of dragons across the sea. They were powerful and frightening, and their wings covered the sky in shadow, and their breath covered the land in fire." 

A few refugees from Tal'Dorei washed up on the shores of Nicodranas, and from them there is a barely-remembered story that the Ruby of the Sea weaves together for her precious daughter. A story with heroes, with impossible odds, with a great battle in a foreign capital. She only tells this story once; her little girl is endlessly excited for new stories, and no bedtime tales have particularly long shelf lives in the upper room of the Chateau.

For three weeks, Jester pretends at dragon growls and stomps around her room. The Traveler, clambering through her narrow window with a bright grin, pretends to slay her and be slain. They trade off being the heroes and being the dragons, at being the struggling forces of good against the undeniable power of evil.

Jester doesn’t like to be mean, but she does like to be powerful.

\---

Jester-at-eleven wonders, sometimes, if her father is a dragon. That must be why he didn't come back to Momma! He flew away in a storm and was blown off course. He's spent all these years trying to find his way back to them. 

(She doesn't tell this theory to Momma. She doesn't even talk about it with the Traveler — he knows, but he always knows her — because it's. It hurts a little bit, actually, and it's easier to pretend that she is a dragon than it is to miss him.)

"I'm here," she whispers up to the sky, "we're both right here."

Maybe she should give up, but Jester doesn’t  _ do  _ giving up. She sees the world a different way. 

What if the unknown is simply the unexplored; what if the dark and endless shadow of the abyss is actually a gleaming light, tucked behind a curtain? What if for every terrible thing in the world there is an instance of heroism? What if for every dragon there is a hero, riding over the ridge with a sword raised high?

\---

In her dreams sometimes, she’s a force of scales and teeth and claws. In her dreams, she screams fire into the sky. In her dreams she is a hunted thing —

While she sleeps, Jester dreams the world in a different way. The Traveler, impossibly fond, turns her dreams away from violence and fear. He whispers a kinder vision into her ears.

In her dreams she carries her father back and her mother smiles without any sadness at all, and they live together in a house made of gold and jewels and mirrors and everything is wonderful.

\---

Her room is her den, and she curls under quilts and chatters her way through a fever. Her mother hangs a prism in the air and it splashes a rainbow across one wall, before she comes to scoop Jester into her arms.

The Chateau is her territory, where she knows the creaky stairs and the hidden alcoves and the attic entrance. Nicodranas is her territory, where the colorful roofs peek up into her window like treasures. The Menagerie Coast is her home while her wings grow in, and she’s going to know every hill and mountain and plain, every seashore and every ship.

Momma rocks her gently, quietly afraid of the day she is no longer here to be held. She sings as Jester’s normally-cool body sweats and shakes, soothing as she can be.

Jester, somewhere between waking and sleeping, stirs against her shoulder. “The dragon song, Momma,” her little girl croaks, and the Ruby of the Sea begins to hum.

She knows no songs about dragons, but her daughter relaxes at the sound of her voice.

(The Traveler whispers, just for Jester:

_ In the deserts of Marquet _

_ Devo’ssa awaits the dawn _

_ Sun upon their great brass wings _

_ Singing their horizon song... _ )

\---

Jester doesn’t think much about dragons, anymore. Not until they meet Cali in the swamp, and she says oh, she’s a tenth dragon.

And Calianna is so lovely, Jester knows her for all of ten minutes before deciding she has a good heart. Jester admires her scales and the spark in her eyes and the strength of her conviction. Jester, for a little while, adores.

She starts to dream again, of talons and firey exhales. She dreams of wings so large that she can protect the Nein from dangers, of working spells so great their enemies never touch them. She dreams of a world where she keeps them safe, where they never suffer and never die.

(“Where’s Molly?” she asks, and the hollow look in Beau’s eyes sets a terrified rhythm to her heartbeat.)

Jester is strong. Not strong enough, never strong enough, but she is strong and she dreams of being stronger.

\---

Dragons mean being afraid. They mean being alone. She understands now.

In the wizard’s trap, the blue-scaled beast reared back and slammed into her shield, tore a cry from her throat. Her friends left her, everyone leaves Jester and it was just her and she might’ve died here, all alone.

(She doesn’t die. She  _ isn’t  _ alone, Jester, beloved of her god.)

The Mythburrow yawns open, a mosaic of ruins and yeti blood and bones cracking underfoot. Beside her, Reani doesn’t falter. It’s the  _ plan _ that fractures. 

But somehow it’s her and it’s Nott and Reani and Beau, sneaking into a dragon’s den like the heroes of a hundred different stories. Not-alone, Jester rushes herself and Nott to the freezing metal. Not-alone, they scream in the dome as Caleb scrawls their escape into the ground. Not-alone, they tumble back into Uthodurn.

That night, Jester draws a dragon frozen by her own ice, a statue nestled in a frozen hoard, a yeti costume. She makes four attempts at changing the verse of a childhood song before Reani comes in with cookies and Jester tucks the sketchbook away.

_ In the  _ <strike> _ deserts of Marquet _ </strike> _ snows of Mythburrow _

_ _ <strike> _ Devo’ssa awaits the dawn _ </strike> _ Gelidon was really cold _

_ _ <strike> _ Sun upon their great brass wings _ </strike> _ Stuck inside her icy den _

_ _ _ <strike>Singing their horizon song</strike> _ _ While we stole away her hoard... _

**Author's Note:**

> it is good to be strong, it is good to believe that you are powerful, it is good to use that to help and protect people. Title comes from “My Dragon Pal and Me,” from Galavant which you should all watch it’s such a good show.  
Not a lot of plot with this one, I just have a lot of feelings about Jester and I like dragons, and I figured the exandrian equivalent to pretending to be godzilla and demolishing a city you built out of blocks was pretending to be a dragon.  
Leave a comment and let me know what you think! :)


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